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Monday, August 13, 2012

The price of conversion: Negotiating the cost of Frivolity in Thunder Bay

The pointless plan to convert Thunder Bay's coal-fired generating units to natural gas has hit a snag. It appears the public generator is demanding compensation to convert the units.

Trouble is not surprising as the units have operated at approximately 3% of capacity over the past couple of years - the premise, that it would be cleaner to build something cleaner not to run, instead of not running coal, is suspect.

The size of the units would also indicate they are far better candidates for running on some blend inclusive of biomass - more so than the larger Atikokan unit, which also is rarely utilized but being converted to not run on biomass (it currently doesn't run on coal)

ONTARIO’S plan to close all of its coal-fired power plants by 2014 has suffered another setback and a Thunder Bay city councillor wants to make sure it doesn’t last long. Larry Hebert, a former city hydro official, has revealed that conversion of the Thunder Bay Generating Station from coal to natural gas is on hold because two branches of Ontario’s energy kingdom can’t agree on price.

1 comment:

The councilor was, perhaps, not well informed.Ontario's Environmental registry has an entry on it, # 011-7019, related to OPG's application to convert the units from burning coal to burning gas, and perhaps co-firing with biomass.http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTE3Mzg2&statusId=MTc1NzAz&language=en